Our cause and fall

So i'm in the mood to worry about the world today.

A name:

Julian Assange

So what is it that springs into your mind when you hear this name? I was reading this particular feature news on the Guardian about Julian Assange today and suddenly I thought back to the first day when I heard about WikiLeaks. That was kind a small 'crazy' moment in itself. Everybody was talking about how this puny site had blown off the top secrets of the powerful one. Of course, no one were very concerned what those top secrets were or meant, because that level of top secret really doesnt make sense to us common folks. But all of humanity was happy that somewhere there were still people fighting off the establishment, showing them the middle finger and telling them to their face that they were not invincible.

When we heard that a man named Assange was behind this, he was our instant hero. We heard that name and we felt a glow inside. This was our sweet revenge against the all powerful establishment. We reveled in each and every leak that they did. We still couldn't make sense of most of those documents, or couldn't care less. The few that were really important, the newspaper would always decode them for us. All we cared about was that, somewhere there was a team and there was a man who could challenge the "big brother". This made us sleep easy.

But now, where is he? He is lost in the cause. He is locked up inside the Ecuador Embassy in London. But we dont like to think about that. We dont even like to think about that man. He is a shame. His name is a taboo. He has "sexual charges" against him.

Would the treatment to Assange have been different had there not been "rape and sexual assault" charges? Or would some other equally detestable charges be dug up anyhow? Was this not the hero that everyone of us looked upto back when we first heard about WikiLeaks and what it was doing? Was this not our "sweet secret revenge" on the enterprises that an ordinary man from among the masses was taking up the fight against "big brothers" and winning (or so it seemed then)? Were we not all "glowing" because of what he did and what he showed common people could do? But the cause seems to have been lost somewhere. Assange has become yet another "taboo" like so many other things that we have secretly appreciation for but cannot come out on the open because there are too many stigmas associated with it.